-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

June 13, 2015

The Cooper’s hawk perched facing west on my neighbor’s back chain link fence. It was the size of a crow and had a speckled breast of black and brown and a long fantail. I had just got out of bed and pulled up the south-facing window shade in my office, and there was the hawk.

And there were my hummingbirds and house finches and goldfinches and chickadees, all feeding, sugar and seeds, below my vantage point. The Cooper’s hawk turned its head sideways and watched them but did not react. A bluejay spotted the hawk, and it shrieked and divebombed at the predator’s head. The hawk was not impressed. Jays can outfly hawks, but they can’t hurt or scare them.

And then the Cooper’s hawk became alert, its head craning down toward the ground, and it was clear it was about to attack. It leaned forward and dropped to the grass and came up with a hapless redtail skink dangling from its talons, and off it flew. Breakfast.

I have been depressed for days. I deflated the other night as I came out the Lambert Airport door and felt the crushing humidity. I had spent nine days in California sunshine and dry air, and had waded in the Pacific Ocean and climbed on, and hiked a lot of mountains.  And there were no mosquitoes in the desert. Continue reading →

May 25, 2015

My walk this morning took me to the peak of Stroke Hill on Stanka Lane, the sun behind me and fast-moving clouds overhead. Swirling shadows appeared on the road, like a mirror ball at a prom, the shadows circling counterclockwise. I looked up to see two hundred American white pelicans in tight formation thirty feet above me, the sun gleaming off the flock, the wings iridescent, the birds silent and purposeful.

All around me, cottonwood seeds snowed and floated and bobbed their way to the forest floor. And in the sunpatches of the road, blue hairstreak and orange and black checkerspot butterflies perched and filled their wings with energy.

And I wept.

It was the beauty of the moment and the full force of the day. Suddenly I imagined the pelicans as waves of allied bombers over Normandy, the cottonwood seeds the parachute troops dropped east of the fighting, to come at the Germans from the back, and the butterflies, master fliers became fighter pilots.

The still largely unknown story of the Second World War was that American troops were segregated. Black army and navy troops served as cooks and road builders (they built the Alaskan Highway). Black pilots with the help of black lawyers literally talked themselves into the air campaign, reborn as the Tuskegee Airmen, with a record of fighter kills unparalleled in history.

The US Department of the Interior commissioned me to interview for the official record the surviving Redtail Angels in the Chicago suburbs. Continue reading →

May 24, 2015

The last of the irises are shedding their purplical finery, and prairie wildflowers are just starting to show off. Wild daisies and purple and yellow Indian paintbrush are abloom along the river and coneflowers are poking up, and rattlesnake master and lobelia.

Indians thought that ingesting lobelia roots and flowers made suitors more attractive and prevented divorces among unhappy wedded couples. Other terms for lobelia include vomit-wort and gagroot. Though I certainly would be in favor of being more attractive, I don’t wish to gag to get there. Ditto for rattlesnake master: an antidote for poison but bitter and gagish.

The skinks, blue-tailed and their larger cousins, the redheaded, their sleek bodies having no scales, are out of hibernation and running amok. They have snake-like heads and they tend to jump out of hiding places, and the more skittish among us might claim to have seen a snake when in fact it was a native Illinois lizard. Last summer, my neighbor Irene had a skink in her house. It scuttled around her dog and hid in a sofa.

Scotch Jimmy Island’s shores are filling up with snowy and great egrets and blue herons. Continue reading →

May 22, 2015

Well, I was sixteen in 1943. I guess you could say I was a hell raiser. There was this bar out on Jerseyville Road—just a country lane back then—Bob and Mary’s bar was in Dow, up the hill from Piasa Creek, on the left hand side. And all the teenage drinkers would go up there—no drinkin’ age, you know—and spend their wages on hooch.

Me and my friend Leland, we was perty much steady customers. Boy, Bob and Mary’s was a rough place. But rich college girls would come there from that Monticello women’s college. Them rich girls was wildcats. They would sneak out windows in their dorms and local fellas would pick them up on Godfrey Road and drive them to Bob and Mary’s.

This one night, me and Leland hitched up with two them college gals. The one I liked, I asked her could I get her anything. And she said I want me a man. So I vowed to give her what she want. Continue reading →

May 20, 2015

The low clouds and cold befit my mood. There is a story in the local paper today, about a grandmother bludgeoning a cat and four kittens to death with a hammer. She did it she told the sheriff, to teach her grandchildren, a fourteen-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy, a lesson. Something about not cleaning their rooms. They learned a lesson all right.

I know the kids. They live near me (well, they did until the D.C.F.S. took them away). They are regulars at the local convenience store, often sitting in the store until closing, no real prepared, hot food, sustaining themselves on soda and beef jerky and snack food. They are lost children. They won’t be recruited by Peter Pan.

They are tall and lanky and sweet. When I’m in story-telling mode, about my adventures in the greater world, a world of which they have no concept, they sidle over and sit next to me and sip soda and listen. The boy talks to me, the girl responds to questions.

Abused and neglected kids follow a herd instinct Continue reading →

May 15, 2015

I awoke early this morning and, used to Scout the Cat standing on my chest and pawing me, I felt around for her: no cat. I got up—it was still darkish—and walked barefoot into the living room.

I could see Scout sitting on the dining table chair, looking out into the darkness of the front yard. She never needs me when something interesting is going on outside. When I approached the chair, she growled and jumped down and melded into the darkness

A bunny rabbit, damn its soul, was prancing around my fenced-in garden, no doubt with dreams of my buttery lettuce stuffed in its adamantine, bucktoothed jaws. The rabbit tried standing on hind legs against the fencing, to no avail.

I turned back to the room, and my right foot squished something liquid and runny and warm. The cat had hacked up an enormous hairball and I had stepped into it, my sole damp and sticky, my soul mortified.

I hopped on my left bare foot toward the kitchen, to get some paper towel and clean up the mess and my drooling appendage—only to land in yet another hairball extraction, and now both feet were anointed with slime, and I snapped on a lamp, and there was the cat, eyeing me as if I had committed a crime, except I was the victim and she was the perp. Continue reading →

May 7, 2015

Orville: You got enough asparagus? Gene: I got no asparagus. Orville: You coulda spoke up. I will pick you some tonight after the tomatoes are planted. Gene: Stir fry tomorrow.

Orville: Plant on Mother’s Day, I was taught. Gene: I picked a container full of kale and spinach and lettuce this morning. Orville: You are a gambler, plantin’ early. Gene: A woman at Lowes told me to plant three weeks ago. Orville: And you always listen to women. Gene: Like you. Orville: The wife starts a-talkin’. I turn down the hearing aids. You win money on that there Kentucky Derby horse? Gene: A waitress at the café won nine hundred dollars on a five dollar bet.

Orville: What in thee hell is wrong with them weather guys on TV? Gene: They called for rain, and look at it. We are dry—the ground is cracked. Orville: I am cracked, I guess. I doubled the blackberries, strawberries, my back is killin’ me. Gene: Say the word, I’ll help you. Orville: I told you about the Orville Way? Gene: Yes. Orville. So.

Gene: My cardinal babies got eaten. Orville: Owls? Gene: Raccoons. Orville: You know what I call songbirds? Hawk food. Them barn cats you like to rub up against—they are bird assassins. They got most of the birds in the blackberry bushes dumb enough to think they was hid.

Gene: Here comes the beehive keeper. Orville: God dang it, I never remember his name. Gene: Bob. Orville: Why in thee hell can’t I remember “Bob”? Boy, his bees are goin’ to town on my produce.

Bob: Hello, boys. Gene: How’s it going, Bob? You have smoke coming out the back of your pickup. Bob: That’s my hive smoker. I’m gonna check the hives for an extra queen. Orville, permission to drive across your lawn? Orville: Git on over there. Bob: See you, boys.

Orville: You do realize that dog belly you are rubbin’ has been wallowin’ in horse shit. Gene: Is that what that grey crusty stuff is? Orville: That dog is useless as a dog. Look at all the barn swallows.

Gene: I better go. I have six more blogs to write for that hotel chain. Orville: What’s the beekeeper’s name? Gene: Bob. Orville: Drop by in the p.m. You’ll have you a bag of asparagus. What do you do with all that? Gene: All what? Orville: You eat kale, spinach, asparagus. Ever crap in your pants? Gene: Not lately.

Orville: Take care. Gene: Take care.

May 16, 2015

In 1955, I was seven-years-old, growing up in Bellville with my little sister and mother and father. We would live in Belleville for eight more, turbulent years then move to Alton. But the spring of ’55 was relatively calm.

We lived across the street from the Skyview Drive In Theatre. My sister and I would play there in the daytime, using the car speakers and jumping around on the drive in playground. I used to stare at the ornate, columned back of the screen (they added screen wings in ’53) and imagine it was alive, a kind of giant.

I remember the smells of popcorn and hot dogs wafting across the street to my inquisitive nose. I remember sneaking out of my house, firefly jar in my hand as an excuse for being out, and running for the woods behind the Skyview and watching the movies on the screen, no sound. I saw quite a few movie stars without knowing who they were. The life of the characters seemed so exciting.

That spring, a storm was brewing in my house. Dad would never fulfill any dream he might have had; Mom had me when she was a teenager—she loved her kids, but she mourned for her lost childhood. She would come down with multiple sclerosis in the early 60s, and it was downhill from there. We would move four times in eight years, from house to unhappy house.

One afternoon, the sky turned black and purple. Dad herded us into the bathroom—we didn’t have a basement—and put my sister and me in the bathtub. Continue reading →

May 12, 2015

My human, Gen-ah, spends a lot of free time cutting greens from his garden, when he should be attending to me. This morning he cut and cut and brought in a big bowl stuffed with spinach and kale and lettuces. He soaked the greens and washed them.

And left the bowl on the counter.

Then he sat in my wing chair and looked in a book, not at me. So I sneaked into the kitchen and ate one third of the green stuff. It was crisp and good and smelled of wild animals. And then I crawled under Gen-ah’s bed, the darkest part where he can’t reach me.

I woke up to my ape yelling, “What the . . . Scot-eh? Did you eat my salad, Scot-eh?”

I could hear him going to all my hiding places, the bathtub, under the sofa, the lamp table. He bumped his head on the lamp table—he always does, and cursed. Cursed! He was cussing at me! He called me a bitch! Well, I am a bitch.

Gen-ah walked on his toes to the bedroom, thinking I couldn’t hear him, when I can hear an ant run across the floor—tastes like chicken. He knelt down and stared. I knew he couldn’t see me; my gray fur and the shadows made me invisible.

But then Gen-ah lifted the comforter onto the mattress, leaving light all around me, and I pretended to sleep. He stuck a hand under the mattress and slid it to my scruff, so I bit his fingers and he yelped.

Gen-ah had to drive somewhere, so he put away the salad bowl and went to someplace called Al Town. I had nice dreams about mice and bunnies—the damn bunnies eat grass right below my window. Note to self: Need some fishing line and a carrot on a hook, to dangle out the window..

The car came back. I ran to the living room carpet and lay on my back—Gen-ah loves this—and waited. He came in and he smelled funny. And he pulled some more greens from his shirt pocket, and they smelled better than tuna fish, and I pounced on them and ate them and got high as a kite.

Gen-ah laughed and got my back scratcher and rubbed my tummy until I about lost my mind. He thought this was cute, when in fact I was seeing visions of muscular, feral male cats singing songs of love to me.

The new greens from Gen-ah’s shirt pocket (does he grow them there?) will now have to be supplied to me on demand. They are called “cat-bite.”

Gen-ah whispered, “I forgive you, Scot-eh, I forgive you,” and I batted his nose, claws retracted. Of course he forgave me. I am queen of all I survey. And then that damn pet dog of mine showed up from next door, hoping to smell my butt..

The salad was forgotten.

May 11, 2015

I was on the road today when I heard a piece on NPR about the sunset on Mars being blue, at 100 degrees below zero. The program host ended his segment by playing that old chestnut by Bobby Vinton, “Blue Velvet.”

1981. I was still a working musician and living in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. I read a notice in my morning newspaper that Bobby Vinton (he was appearing at the Pump Room) was looking for new songs. Show up in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue and be prepared to pitch to Mr. Vinton.

I wrote folk songs in those days and appeared in clubs with my partner, Steve Hagerman (Hagerman and Blue). Hardly Bobby V.’s cup of tea (my hormonal sister would have thrown her underwear at the crooner). But I had written one mellow song, about sitting on my mom’s front porch in Alton and watching the rain, “Rainy Day Blues.”

So I drove down to the Hilton in my work shirt and jeans, my strawberry hair draped over my shoulders, and I saw a group of kids gathered around a man, whom I would learn, was Vinton’s manager. I got in a long line and stood for about an hour, my guitar Betsy in her hard shell case. Continue reading →